EmiTown, Vol. 1

EmiTown #1

by Emi Lenox

From the whimsical to the tragic, Emi Lenox (PLUTONA, TADAIMA) brings you into her world with superb cartooning, a brilliant cast of characters and an innocent perspective often left on the cutting room floor of other diary comics. Emi proves that life is never dull in her first annual collection of EMITOWN! Introduction by Jamie S. Rich (MADAME FRANKENSTEIN, Lady Killer).

Praise for EMITOWN: "Some of the nicest cartooning I've discovered in a long time." —Jeff Lemire, Descender, Plutona

"Emitown is one of my favorite places to visit... I simply love the fresh energized pop that comes from Emi's work!" —Mike Allred, iZombie

"Emitown is the kind of place where you finish reading and then go outside and get all disappointed that everyone's not a cute cartoon character defying various laws of physics." —Jeffrey Brown, Darth Vader & Son

"Emi Lenox is the adorable little sister of Harvey Pekar, making Emitown heir apparent of the autobio genre." —Moritat, Elephantmen, The Spirit

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Memoir, Nonfiction, Comix, Graphic Novels Comics, Sequential Art

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 2010

About the author

Emi Lenox is based out of Portland, Oregon, and is a comic creator widely known for EMITOWN, a web-based diary comic that was later published by Image as two printed volumes. She has done work for Mike Allred's MADMAN, Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth, GLORY, CBLDF's LIBERTY ANNUAL, and co-created PLUTONA with Jeff Lemire.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

man, this book could have been so freaking good. i'm a late-discoverer of mizz emi lenox, but i saw this cover and i was instantly book-grabby.

however, although her drawings are undeniably great, the book as a whole is a disappointment. it's a collection of daily drawings, ostensibly autobiographical in nature, but she fails to commit to the one simple rule of autobiographical comics: divulge.

going the autobiographical route is hard. it's squicky to put yourself out there for all to see, without vanity, insecurity, fear of who will read it and what they will think, and not everybody has the stones to share the dark juicy parts of their lives, and she clearly doesn't, which is clear from this drawing:



and obliquely, from these:





she's altogether too self-conscious for the demands of autobiography. but if you expect a reader to get through more than 400 pages of your doodles and musings, you gotta give them something a little more raw than what is in these pages. do it or don't do it, but don't expect a reader to tune in just for an outline of yourself as a human being.

let us see and smell your poo. poo is what connects us all.

when you take out the personal component to the diary form, what are you left with? basically a list of what she ate, how much she drank, where she went and with whom, her money woes, the daily temptation of coffee even though it makes her feel icky, and her nemesis the breakfast burrito, which takes up a disproportionate amount of page-time. there are some minor unpleasantness like a parking ticket, a spider bite, her dog pooping in the wrong place, but it's human without being personal.

anything personal in an emotional sense is elided, hinted-at, and deflected with song lyrics,



vague self-analyses and revelations that only she understands,



even vaguer worries that read like a mad libs version of a diary



if you're writing a diary for an audience, you have to keep the audience interested. if you're writing for yourself in diary form, you don't need to be that coy about the details. pick a side and stand your ground because teasing the reader with this kind of stuff is intriguing without being interesting:



400 pages of insinuation is not illuminating, interesting, or coherent and it's a drag to know a lot about what she ate:



and what she bought:



while glossing over anything deeper



"things," "factors," "something," "it" - everything is so damn guarded. except that breakfast burrito.



it just feels like an ersatz stand-in for experience and growth, like some treacly motivational poster.

there are days in which she seems to feel sorrow, apprehension, where something affected her, but we get no concrete reference point for the feeling.



no idea why she supposedly has no soul or what the work situation is, but hey - at least we know what she ate for breakfast!



so vague….



she spends way too much time on the breakfast burrito plight, and wayyyy more time congratulating herself on doing housework than a 26-year-old should, especially one who occasionally goes to her parents' house to do laundry.

there are many examples of drawings like this



and other celebratory sharings of accomplishing basic shit



her tone in general is very young and sheltered. it lacks perspective of what would be interesting to readers, or that flair in making the mundane interesting, and relies on cutesy goo goo far too frequently:







she says it about herself in a different context:

I've never broken a bone, been seriously ill, been in a car accident, and never had anyone I was really close to die (except Weenie)<--- her cat.

she doesn't have much to write about in terms of life-experience, but she's scared of sharing what she does have and we're left with the literary equivalent of cotton candy - supersweet and leaving no trace of itself after you've read it:









none of this is interesting. it's cute, maybe, but it's just empty blather.



ew, sweat is icky!

this is a girl who needs to have a bit more of life happen to her before she starts selling it in book-form. but that's not even the real problem - the real problem is that she refuses to be interesting even when she could:



if there were ever a missed opportunity for telling a personal anecdote, that time "I fell through a glass door in the mid nineties" ranks pretty high. but no. we never learn the details of that particular tale.

and ironically, just under that doodle, she starts talking about how her work is 'emotionally driven':



but she never shares any of that emotion with the reader. weak stuff. you neither come across as sad nor demonstrate a happy energy. you're just a cute puppy drawing cute stuff squee #breakfastburrito!

it's almost worse when she does try to demonstrate emotional depth:



this is the kind of inward-facing emo babble i was scrawling in my journals when i was a teenager that i'd long outgrown by the time i hit 26.

and this is just a muddle of ideas/realizations that doesn't even have a coherent thread or logic



that's just four different tangents signifying nothing.

more hazy nonsense:



what is she concerned about? what is the downside she just learned? we will never know, but at least we know that there is something called "blackberry brambles" that is yum yum.

she's occasionally more transparent than she intends:



the accidental repetition of "at all" is pretty telling, but still not interesting without context or personality.

ordinarily, it would be enough for me that she draws cute things, and i understand it can be challenging to draw something new every day, but not everything is interesting enough to document, and including to-do lists



or tallying your expenses on every page



is just wasted space. no one cares how much you spend on gas. tell us something real, let us in.



realer than that.

and after 400 pages, it doesn't even end anywhere that feels like closure or a natural stopping point. the final page covers her inability to parallel park and the fact that she doesn't like her neck touched and then it just ENDS.



it seems like a slap in the face after reading so much. there's nothing to connect the reader to the book at all.

the worst part is that she's not unaware of her crutches



it just doesn't stop her from using them



and while we're wearing our nitpicky hats, there's a lot of wonky grammar, and misspelled or wrong words. so, hhmph.



it's funny - i think i liked this book more before i actually sat down to review it, and during my second "review-pass," all the things that had bothered me stood out more. my breaking point on the second read was this page:



so much immaturity clustered up here: teen sarcasm, look how weird and whimsical i am, LOL lesbians!! blarg.

she's a cute girl that draws well and she's probably fun to drink with, but this is not nearly confessional enough a book to interest people who dig autobiographical comics - it reads like a training-wheels kind of life with no takeaway for the reader. if she's not going to show her human warts, she should stick to illustrating and just let someone else do the writing next time.

[Raina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know. I wanted to like this. I did. Emi lives in Portland, so I not only recognized places and activities, but I've also crossed paths with many people in the comics community she mentions.

Also I think her drawing styles kick some a. I would totally enjoy an entire story featuring her casual style, and would probably totally want to OWN a story using her more detailed and realistic illustrations.

I enjoyed hearing the minutae of an up and coming comic creator. And I did warm up to it as I went along.

But it's so. dang. long. And while we get all the detail we could ever want (and more) about her food and spending choices, we get no details of the juicy stuff. Boys, arguments, the meaning of life... it's all missing or only hinted at. We get metaphor alongside budgets with too many abbreviations.

I wouldn't mind this in a zine. I know other comic creators who put out zines of their daily comics/sketchbooks, and to me, that seems like a reasonable use.

But in a four hundred page tome published by image, I wanted there to be some apparent editing. ANY editing. That isn't just so we don't find out who she's thinking about dating. I wish someone (an editor, perhaps?!?) had gone through and picked one image from each page that tells a story, instead of (seemingly) just publishing her entire sketch book outright.

Because there are gems here. There are nuggets of awesome. There are things that I'd REALLY love to read, and maybe even frame. But I feel like her illustrations would be stronger telling a story that isn't just a song lyric that happens to be stuck in her head.

It might work as a "from the archives" kind of piece from a well-known star in comics (man, I would take anything I could get from Craig Thompson), but from someone who hasn't done anything else, this feels... unedited.

[Siina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sigh. It took me ages to read this. I'm overwhelmed, but not in a good way and the comic wasn't extremely bad either. It's just that nothing worked in it, if you don't count the art, since that was nice (especially for the diary like style). 400 pages is far too much when there's nothing happening in the comic. It's a diary of Emi's life and as a webcomic this could actually work on some level. It would've been better to turn this into two volumes, since this was way too heavy. It's not all about the length either. The pages didn't have any logic and nothing was linked with any other thing most of the time. Like you had two or three things on the same page, so that it felt like a mess and mostly loose (almost epileptic, really). Again, this wouldn't have been so bad, if Emi actually had done something with her life except drink booze, complain, eat and meet friends. 400 pages of nothingness. We don't really get to know Emi and thus it's hard to care. How many times do you really need to draw yourself eating the same breakfast burrito? The comic is boring. There's no flow whatsoever and it's hard to call it a biography, when you get to know absolutely nothing about its maker or the people in it. The times she meets friends is just an announcement and mostly the panels are full of talking heads.

The art is kind of cute and the blueish color theme works well with it. The art work is the only thing that works, since there's too much text too and everything's so heavy that you want to slit your wrists. Perhaps Emi could write about her life when there's actually something to tell about and it would've been great to know about the war cats and the philosophical stuff with the dark haired girl, since neither made any sense. What a letdown...

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

'EmiTown, Vol. 1' by Emi Lenox is a year in the life of a good cartoonist. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing I liked, but it kind of won me over.

Every page is a day in the life. From expenditures to doodles to adventures with friends. Emi lives in Portland and runs into other local artists from time to time, but most of her days are spent getting together with friends or trying not to buy so much coffee or breakfast burritos.
There isn't a lot of narrative flow, so it just goes on and on. There are personal details, but it's missing something, so it all has a sameness to it. At 400 pages, that can feel a bit tedious after a while, and it did wear on me, but I kept coming back for more of the adorable artwork.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors, Image Comics, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This isn't your typical graphic novel. It's not even a novel or fiction.

It's a diary comic that offers a very raw, open, insight to the life of Emi Lenox as she starts her journey to become a successful comic artist. It also chronicles her personal life with friends and pets in Portland, Oregon. Everything from money troubles to relationship troubles.

Even without being able to draw more than a stick figure personally, I was able to relate a lot to things that Emi was either going through or had gone through. Being an east coaster, I only vaguely know the references from either my brother's travels (he's made it way further west than me) or from watching Portlandia (though it's an exaggerated take on Portland). lol.

There is a range of drawings in her diary that makes it a good overview of her style as a whole and the different forms it takes. I also like the way there are song lyrics and drawings to go along with them sprinkled throughout.

I'm glad I got the chance to read it, and definitely want to read vol. 2. I'd love to see her fictional comics or get the chance to see her at a con and maybe buy some artwork.

Diary comics aren't for everyone though, but if this format is a usual winner with you it's an entertaining/touching one. Her determination to have a positive can-do attitude is also a bit inspiring.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, and I like the illustrations, and Emi Lenox seems like she'd be a fun and interesting person to hang out with. However, EmiTown started off as a personal diary, and reading it feels like one, and not in a good way. There are too many redundant and repetitive details, and, since the pages weren't designed to be read as a graphic novel, the art doesn't lead the eye. Furthermore, for something that started off as a personal diary, it seems somewhat lacking in personal detail or depth, with too much time spent on beverage costs than life events. Consequently, Emi unfortunately sometimes comes off like a whining Millenial instead of the endearing, quirky, creative, sometimes self-conscious I suspect that she is. With some editing (definitely shortening), and some reworking of the entries into a tight, cohesive story, I think that this could be a good book, but with this version, I was left wondering when the book would end, and how this ended up being published in this form.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

[Topher · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a real trudge to get through. It's just Emi Lenox's journal. Like...grocery lists and stuff. I'm trying to find a way not to call this one of the laziest memoirs I've ever seen, but...it is. If this had been used as the inspiration for a memoir about that year, with her artwork and writing style, it would have been a blast, but instead we get an actual, uncut journal of an artist living in Portland. Just...completely underwhelming.

There's no attempt to make any of the characters or events compelling, because what's the point, if you're just writing in your journal? If it's only for you, you already know the characters, so there's no need to give any details to anything. But. This isn't just for her. This was published as an actual book that's, like...at my library. And now sitting on my kitchen counter waiting to go back to the library.

What's frustrating is that I like Emi Lenox. I just wish she'd write a real graphic memoir instead of just sort of scanning and publishing her diary. A bummer.

[Rachael Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know if other people enjoy reading journal comics as much as I do. Is it because I have kept a journal since I was 13, almost religiously for the past decade? Or do I just really like getting a glimpse inside someone else’s life?

I loved Emitown. I loved it for a lot of reasons.

I loved the army cats because, come on. Army cats.

I loved it for Emi’s love of food. In fact, because of Emi I have been eating sausage McMuffins, cheeseburgers, and sushi. It’s a hard knock life.

I loved that Emi was so kind to herself! Even when she was feeling down, she was drawing about how that was okay and that was really good for me to see.

I loved that she had adventures. It made me nostalgic for the days when I would just run off to the bar with my friends. (Never, you guys. Those days were never. lol)

Seriously pleased that I purchased this and that I have volume 2 waiting for me.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the diary of cartoonist Emi Lenox. I think the second one is coming out soon. It is a very sweet, quirky, hopeful look at the day-to-day adventures of a twenty-something girl living in the Pacific Northwest who is trying to figure out what to do to make her life, friendships, and career work and fit together. The book has a journal format, and following her thoughts and developments daily really feels like reading someone else's secret musings. I want to say that if I could draw I would keep a similar journal, but I'd be lying. However, it did inspire me to keep a better record of things I do on a regular basis. It must be so nice to look back and realize how far you've gotten. :)

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really thought this would be great from reading several descriptions about it. It was OK... I liked the artwork, which is why I gave 2 stars. The thing about it is I don't see the point. It really is just some random ideas with some sketches. I basically just skimmed the whole thing because it was page after page after page of inconsequential details - the cost of her shoes, how many hours she slept last night, etc. It's supposed to be her journal or an outlet but I'm not sure we needed 400 pages of these little tidbits. I really just don't see the point.

[Dana * · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not finish this book. I found Emitown to be farily boring and kept waiting for something to happen. I knew the type of book it was, but I just kept expecting it to be more interesting. Stream of consciousness can be extremely humorous, as so many bloggers have shown us. I just was never pulled into the character or her worlds. I kept skipping pages and trying to see if I should keep going, but could not find anything to pull me in. It was like finding a box of some friends old doodles, all in chronological order, and being disappointed that it just didn't have much to say.

[Theediscerning · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author of this book starts with an introduction admitting she didn't want these copious pages of 'diaries' ever published… I'm on her side in that. There's no point I can see in wading through 400pp of bitty, sketchy non sequiturs and personal things that (a) you can't read or understand and (b) can't enjoy whatsoever. There's a page per day here – no editing, no comprehensibility, and for obvious reasons no forethought for the audience. Therefore – no point.

[Cha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm okay with the potential mundanity and repitition of diary comics. But here it didn't speak to me and just made me sad about the things that absorb people. Records of consumption: food, coffee, alcohol. The challenge of budgeting; the desire for material things. Maybe sometimes in a joyful way, but also often in a self-loathing or defeated kind of way. More personal dreams and desires are present, but obscured or reduced to cliche.

[Sara J. (kefuwa) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diary comic of Emi Lenox.

I couldn't finish it in one go (and I pretty much don't think slice of life is supposed to be finished in one go - how much mundane can you take (even good mundane)? Huhu.) but overall I really liked the voice and the art style was really - well, not exactly cute, but I liked it.

I will be checking out Plutona...!

[Hillingdon Libraries]

Find this book at Hillingdon Libraries

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun look at someone else's life. Emi is so different from me and it was so fun/funny to read this account of random interactions threw a sketch diary. It's amazing how much life has changed in 5 years...

[mkhare · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you liked Scott Pilgrim, you should like this. I didn't love it, but this is unique for sure. and Funny.

I recieved an advanced copy of this from Netgalley.com and the publisher.

[AquaMoon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Admittedly, this took while to read. It's the sort of thing you can only read in small bits. And, admittedly, it took me a while to catch the rhythm of the format. It's random and jumpy and sometimes reads like one of those vaguely passive-aggressive facebook posts that only reveals enough for everyone to know something is wrong/going on in the post writer's life, but doesn't reveal any specifics (you know the sort of post). Sometimes storylines start up, but don't go anywhere. Sometimes the storylines begin in the middle and you, the reader, have to try and figure out what's going on. Other times it's just like, "Here's a random sketch of what I ate for dinner on Tuesday". So yeah, weird. And kind of frustrating at times.

All that aside, I DID enjoy the book. Emi is a hot mess (or she was back in 2009-2010), poor girl. And she doesn't always make the best life choices. And this gets her into trouble sometimes, and she's kicking herself afterward. But she's got good friends and, despite everything, the tone of the book is decidedly optimistic...but not in an irritating, Pollyanna way (Like, I can't imagine Emi dropping everything to sing "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow"- unless, of course, she maybe had a few too many drinks with Jamestown whilst stranded at a Karaoke club).

Also, this book made me want to run home and cuddle my cat...even though he was being a total jerk last night, biting me when I tried to pet him after he demanded attention.

And also, giving up coffee will never happen, Emi. Resistance to its sweet, caffeinated siren call is futile. I know this to be a cold, hard fact. Stopped trying - or wanting to try - long ago.

Finally, this book made me want peanut butter cups, and I don't even like peanut butter cups.

In short, it's a fun book. I don't like it as much as Hyperbole and a Half, but I like it :)

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

CN: ableist & classist terms mentioned.

This was a great comfort read to dip in and out of, and to spend chunks of time with on lazy weekends when you're hibernating. It's very human and the young, spunky energy behind it is fun and nostalgic, if quite twee for the age she is. The army cat interludes and the art features like the Pretty Artists Detective Agency are really great. Some of the language is lamentable. It's laced with casual ableism and classism despite being pretty recent, so I feel like it could at least have been more consciously edited. We don't need to see the words 'spaz' or 'dumb', or 'bum' when referring to homeless people. That hurt to read. It's also incredibly guarded, so very very surface level and often barely enough detail for interest's sake, never mind deep personal disclosures. Odd choice to publish really, because it's obviously written *for* the author alone - there's no explanation of the reflections to invite a reader in.

[Jinx · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the casual structure of this book. I thought the idea of a visual comic diary was a really cool way to represent the events of a day. The way EMI presents the information was very playful and I enjoyed the OC's appearances throughout the book. I definitely would like to read the second volume.

The few things I did not particularly enjoy are because of personal preference; There are some parts of this book that, in my opinion, did not age well. I thought Emi's view on some things were very indicative of the geographical area in which she was during the publication of this book and also the time period in which it was written. 2008 was ROUGH for some social issues and a few sentences made me cringe. Others may not have problems but personally some sentiments were hard for me to personally read. Like so many others who rated and reviewed this book, I wanted to like it more than I did. Sorry Emi!!

[Wm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lenox is clearly talented. Her art style *should* place her stories amongst my faves, woven somewhere into the midst of Liz Prince, Chester Brown and Katie Skelly. But this is worse than reading someone's grocery list, b/c at least with a list of as-yet-unbought items, you know the point; the "why" is evident. I had to abandon my read and skim images maybe 20 pages in. Then I skimmed images increasingly quickly till maybe 1/2 way.

When my imagined promise that something narrative might develop proved futile (at least from what I could see) it reminded me that I have fewer days ahead than behind.

That it's acclaimed by so many notable creators makes me feel like a shallow piece of shit. But really, when you have to personally know an author to "get" their stuff, foreword writer Mr Rich, that author needs those friends to set aside their boobs jokes and recommend, I dunno, vanity publishing? print-on-demand?

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get past the first month. The only reason I gave this book 2 stars is for the drawings that could be really cute at times.

There was nothing linking one day to the next. It's great that Emi Lenox did a comics diary, but there is no obvious point to it for the reader. Sure, the drawings are good - although usually quite simple - but there was nothing to draw me in and make me enjoy her world. It's the kind of diary that should have stayed private (or at the manuscript stage at least). A published work should be for the author, but mainly made with the idea that people will read it. This book is not something that someone who has no emotional ties to Lenox would read.

And I would really like to know what those blue post-its with numbers and letters on them are about...

[Joshua Sloan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's something quaintly pleasant about a daily log of minutae and the tiny steps necessary to make a career out of art. However, that doesn't make up for a complete lack of detail about ANYTHING with emotional resonance whatsoever. Also, she sure goes out for drinks a LOT considering how tight her budget always is.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished reading this book a long time ago and did not write a review. I do remember the book was very cute and that I really enjoyed it.

[Sierra Dean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for TLP.

The rating on this might have been much higher if I'd read this slower. I'm going to read volume 2 and see if I'm lest frustrated with it.

[Andréa]

Note: I received a digital review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

[Grace Kao · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found myself feeling ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I appreciate reading about the struggles and minutiae of the life of an aspiring comics artist. On the other hand, because Emi was so aware of her audience, she kept her readers at a distance throughout the emotional revelations in the book -perhaps to protect her privacy, but one would argue, the very nature of a diary comic is antithetical to the idea of privacy itself. Anyway, I'm glad I read it and I find her career struggles immensely comforting to read about.

[Kristina Aziz]

The Good: Emi has a fantastic talent for drawing. I'm super impressed and jealous. Emi is raw and honest and has a really cute style even when it comes to her words.


What could be better: While I appreciate the candor of this book, letting us see every bit of detail, I'm not sure we really...needed so much detail. Gosh, there was a lot. I don't really mind long works--my favorite book is the Poisonwood Bible. But I wish there had been more of a story element, at least in the first few pages where it matters most.

I lost interest before I could get a tenth of the way through. I pushed until page 50 and still didn't really feel like I had met Ocean Girl, White Heart or Black Heart. I'm sure, according to their profiles on the first page, I had seen them. But according to their descriptions I couldn't really be sure.

No star rating (read: not a zero, just declining to rate). I'm sure many others would love this book but it wasn't for me.

[Chris Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book in return for an honest review.

Emitown is a bio-comic from Emi Lenox (who works on Sweet Tooth) and I was lucky enough to get an ARC to read. I haven't ready many diary/autobiographical comic books, but this was a fantastic doorway into the genre. The art is great, the writing is relatable and funny, and I am eager to check more of Emi's work out now. It made me laugh a lot, and I found it hard to put down. The feminine edge to the book, being that it is from the perspective of a female twenty-something, makes me feel like it would be definitely more relatable for female comic fans, but as a nerd with a love for comic books, I had a blast with it regardless. I recommend it, it's an easy, calming and enjoyable read with wonderful quirky illustrations.

4.75 out of 5